Somebody very kindly posted my (Leo) horoscope yesterday or the day before and I’ve been scanning all the comments because I’m wondering if it warned that I would break a tooth and then a computer in one weekend.  I still can’t find the comment with the horoscope, but did get a new laptop today. Mine has been on it’s way out for a long time. It didn’t close and I had to tape it shut when I traveled with it. I guess you’re not supposed to keep dropping the laptops on the ground.  And it wasn’t really my tooth that broke, on Friday, just a veneer. On one of my front teeth. Oh, you thought those were my real teeth?  No, no, my real teeth have been filed down to scary little nubbins in order to make way for the veneers. You see, I had a less than perfect smile.  I had a big gap between my front teeth that somehow looked cool until I was 35, and then, overnight, made me look like a witch.  I’m not sure how that happened but the exact same thing happened to a friend of mine when she turned 35.

But yesterday nothing broke.  Denis and I went to see our daughter play her last high school hockey game.  Holly came along. She is sometimes timid in unfamiliar places so I’m trying to expose her to stuff.  The last time I took her to a hockey game she shivered under my coat, so this time I found a little hoodie for her.

Yes, it’s a hockey sweatshirt! I found it on a stuffed bear.

Lord almighty, ain’t she a cute ‘un, though? (Still missing part of tooth).

She rode on Denis’s lap on the way to the game.

And she rooted for Dev’s team.

Sorry, the hockey photos all came out a little blurry, but that’s our Dev with her stick on the ice (I think).

GO BIG RED!

Today I received an email from the original man of the blog himself, our very own Alan, who very gently and quietly reminded me that his friend, author David K. Leff, would be reading and signing books at my favorite bookstore this afternoon.  So off I went at 2:00 to hear David Leff talk about his book, Deep Travel: In Thoreau’s Wake on the Concord and Merrimack.  His talk and his book are about what he calls, “a methodology for looking.”  They’re about looking mindfully at the everyday places and things and thereby gaining an understanding of their history and man’s part in it.

I lifted part of a review of the book from Amazon: “Leff follows Thoreau’s paddle-strokes not only by traveling the same rivers, but by creating a ‘fusion of inward and outward experience,’ incorporating essay-like musing about time and place—and the power of both stories and history to evoke them. Deep Travel is a primer on the art of ‘sight-seeking’ and ‘forensic observation,’ and Leff offers penetrating readings of the river, the vernacular landscape, and Thoreau.”—Ian Marshall, author, Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need and Walden by Haiku

David’s talk was very interesting and now I’m dying to get started on the book.  Outside the Hickory Stick we all posed for photos for the blogs.  David Leff has one too.  It’s here.

Now, I hesitate to show these pictures, but I will, as it will serve as a lesson to all you ladies.  This afternoon, as I headed out after hours squinting at my computer, I looked in the mirror and considered applying makeup.  Just a little mascara.  Then I actually thought: why bother, I’ll just have to take it off later.  And I also had the completely delusional thought: at a certain age, women look quite lovely without any makeup at all.

Somebody actually said that to me recently.  That women look “softer” without makeup at a certain age. Well, how’s this for “soft”?

That’s me with Alan, above. Yes, my face is so soft that my eyes have completely disappeared.

Here I am with David Leff:

Yes, I’m displaying my man hands.  No, I don’t usually wear my wedding ring.  Yes, I’m married.  Any other questions?

David Leff also writes poetry and so I will close with a poem that I lifted from his website:

Halftones

by David K Leff

Bathed in drizzle at dawn, I walk down to the river without
coffee or shower, the haze of slumber not yet fully lifted.
I’m quieted by a world hushed in a glaze of moisture. Light
slowly leaks into a dingy sky, creeps silently without wind
as fugitive wisps of ragged clouds drag mist across hills of
dew-lit grass. All is a muted charcoal smudge,
a sketchbook landscape.  Deep within the fog, on a leaden
millpond framed by a fretwork of gray tree-branch
shadows, geese softly echo each other, hoarsely calling
to ignite a pallid morning growing as vivid as the video
dreams that stirred me from sleep.

Photo by Moses Pendleton

HER KIND, by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

As some of you might recall, I’m working on this book with a bit of a witch theme. Today I read that during the English witch craze in the 1640s, the Rev. John Gaule recorded that “every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr’d brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue … is not only suspected, but pronounced for a witch. “

Okay, conveniently, the stinky old men who hunted and tried these witches, left the pretty, young unwrinkled maidens out of the mix.

It’s interesting to me that the physical characteristics that women of a certain age try to correct with Botox, waxing, fillers, etc are the exact characteristics that once would have identified us as witches. Other red flags identifying witches were the presence of a “familiar” – an animal that the witch talks to and supposedly suckles, then sends forth to perform evil deeds. Now don’t look at me. I certainly don’t suckle my familiars – they were weaned long ago – but I do talk their ears off and why not? They don’t mind my furr’d brow, hairy lip, etc.

Why were men so threatened by aging women for so many centuries? And why do we women still try to prevent ourselves from looking our age, now, when there is little risk of being stoned or burned at the stake for our appearance?

“Yes, it is a witch’s life.” Anne Sexton

So, as some of you know, I’m working on a novel set near Salem, Massachusetts. One of the characters has an ancestor (ancestress?) who was a famous witch. I used to live in nearby Marblehead and went to various schools in New England and met a few people who claimed to be descendents of one or another witch who was hung in Salem. I think it’s interesting that so many claim to be related to the 29 martyrs that were hung in Salem Village, but I’ve never heard one person claim any association with the hundreds of others – accusers, jailors, quiet do-nothings who lived in an around the village.

If you visit Salem, you will be welcomed to “Witch City” when you drive into town. There is a Salem Witch museum, witch tours, even a “Witch Dungeon” you can visit. When I was a teenager, there was a large sign in the middle of town pointing the way to the witch dungeon, but some kids always painted over the last letters in the sign so it said, “Witch Dung” with an arrow pointing ominously across the street.

What many don’t know is that the witch trials happened not in the town of Salem that so celebrates the witch lore today, but in Salem Village, which is now the town of Danvers. Danvers State Hospital, a monstrous hospital for the insane was recently closed. It was called the Lunatic Asylum at Danvers when it opened in the 19th century. It was built on Hathorne Hill, named after, not Nathaniel Hawthorne, the writer, but after John Hathorne, one of the original judges who presided over the witch trials and the only one who never repented. How fitting that latter day witches – the “lunatics” as they called them, were to be confined on his hill.

Now,the hospital has been shut down. I understand that part of it has been turned into condominiums. I wonder if you can still hear the witches at night when the moon is full. The lunar tics and cries and belching and rantings of the former residents.

Here’s a helpful fashion tip for the ladies: When tending to your barn animals, make sure you look your best, just in case your charming Irish blacksmith should show up a little earlier than announced. I recommend you try to duplicate the smart outfit I wore this very morning when farrier Eammon Gillespie arrived:

The oversized barncoat/duster provides a delightful sense of mystery to a woman. The smudges of mysterious substance on its surface (wormer? manure) only serves to add to its tantalizing appeal. I chose the fashion forward pink hostess pajama because of it’s wonderful fit, offering just a peek of flesh between its hem and those sexy striped ankle socks. Also, I like to add a sense of fun, when I’m expecting guests. Notice how my slippers are not only two different styles, but also BOTH belong to the right foot!

Notice how I spared you my look from the neck up? Poor Eammon, not only was I dressed like a mental patient when he arrived, but my hair was sticking straight out like a hag’s and I was talking to my horse Gabriel. I don’t say things to my horses like, “Good boy,” or “Nice horsey.” I was saying, “If I drive in and out of the city today, I’ll only have to drive back in tomorrow. I really should stay the night …” Then I noticed that Eamonn was standing in the aisle. Of course, he greeted me with his great Irish brogue, as if nothing was in the least bit unusual. I suppose they have witches in Ireland too.

Tammy and others have been kind enough to ask how I am recovering from my surgery and I’m doing great. I really have no pain anymore and feel so much better than I did before the surgery that I am just thrilled to have it over with.

Now that I can drive, I feel much more like myself. Am going into the city today for a doctor’s appointment. I think the reason I’ve been doing so much posting of other people’s poems and adoptable dogs is because I am FINALLY making some headway with this new book I’m writing. I actually feel like it’s writing itself at this point and there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day.

I’ve posted here before that It’s set in a small New England town and the main character is a descendent of one of the accused witches in Salem so I’ve been doing all sorts of research about Cotton and Increase Mather and women with first names like Deliverance. I’ll never get over my fascination with this subject. The way the villagers saw certain aspects of nature as the workings of the devil. Also, how easy it is to breed fear into a populace, as is happening now, I believe, in our country, in so many ways. So that’s what I’m up to.

Maybe as I come across some interesting tidbits in my research I’ll share them here. I read something last night about “white magic” which our colonists learned from their European ancestors, and which was done in the name of God, vs. “black magic”, which was the work of the devil. One Salem woman, Goody Somebody, baked a “witch cake.” She sprinkled the urine of three girls “afflicted” by the evil spells of local accused witches and fed the cake to a dog. When the dog ate the cake, the witch was supposed to scream in agony because it was believed that she had passed particles of her wicked being into the girls and that she would suffer when the dog consumed them.

“White Magic” wasn’t condoned by the church, but I’m just fascinated by the way these women, who were so busy, worked so hard, day in and day out, still had time to gather and share these ideas about godliness and wickedness and how it all related back to their own bodies and the bodies of young girls and the fertility of their livestock and nature in general. So that’s what I’ve been up to, sitting in my little office with the wind whipping leaves against my windows and the sounds of a tree branch scratching my roof like a witch’s claw.

I’m working on a new novel and I’m sometimes led to interesting places while doing my “research” (procrastinating). The book I’m working on is set in a small town in New England and it involves a psychiatrist and a scandal. There is also a theme that involves witches, but you know, the modern kind. Anyway, my internet meanderings led me to this article that was published in TIME Magazine in 1956. You can find it here.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to open this link. It’s an article about a psychologist in 1956 who published a paper in a journal of psychology about modern day witches. This doctor used, as case studies, six young female patients “all of whom were loathed by everybody, including the analyst.” He referred to these loathsome patients as modern-day “hags.”

“ Stein’s half-dozen “witches in modern dress” were all youthfully slender, lively of expression, some of them bucktoothed and “prancing” of gait. Although they were married and active sexually, they secretly dreaded the sex act and remained “psychically virgins.” They had a “miniminy mouth”; that is, they were ” ‘mim,’ prim, reticent, shy, affected.” They tended to be frigid, attract weak, boyish men, hated kissing on the mouth (a witch’s kiss was believed to draw out the soul). Often they had affairs, mainly with married men. They hated and hurt men, yet believed they were of loving disposition; they were charming, and yet tortured men.”

This Stein fellow had six of these bucktoothed, prancing, miniminy-mouthed hags in one practice? Honestly, while reading this it occurred to me that I bear more than a passing resemblance to these poor women. I’m not loathed by everybody and I do not have buck teeth, but the prancing gait thing worries me, because I do have a rather animated walk and although I certainly don’t “dread” the sex act, I do consider myself a psychic virgin. I like to think that I’m charming and yet that I torture men, but in reality, especially in recent years, men really seem to take little notice of me at all. The piece is fascinating to me, though, because it was really not written that long ago. The shrink actually used the word “hag” several times to describe these patients. Read it, I’m telling you.